The Grid 7 battle group had returned to the shipyards between Jupiter and Mars for refurbishment and refitting and to take on new personnel. They would also incorporate fifteen recently completed Juggernauts and Mantas, but that didn’t begin to replace all the ships the battle group had lost during the debacle in the rings of Osquivel. In the month since that disaster, the Earth Defense Forces had jumped at every shadow.
Tasia Tamblyn herself had gone to the new star of Oncier, site of the first test firing of the Klikiss Torch, and had watched the titanic battle between hydrogues and faeros, which had resulted in the complete snuffing of the artificial sun created from a gas-giant planet. Seeing a war in which whole worlds and stars were casualties, Tasia didn’t know how tiny humans could hope to cause any damage to the enemy. . . .
But it wouldn’t stop her from trying. The drogues had killed her brother Ross on his skymine, and her lover Robb Brindle when he’d gone down into the clouds under a white flag of truce. If vengeance was at all in her power, Tasia didn’t intend to let the deep-core bastards get away with that. A stern expression had once looked out of place on her heart-shaped face, but not anymore.
She had pale skin from growing up under the icy ceiling of her clan’s water mines on Plumas, and had never gotten much color from serving in the EDF aboard ships all the time. Her light blue eyes reminded her of the frozen walls of the family settlement beneath the glacial surface of the isolated moon.
While her Manta was in dock at the asteroid belt shipyards, some of her crew had been rotated to either Mars or the Moon base for a week of downtime. For herself, Tasia had no use for furloughs and did not wish to visit Earth. The only time she’d gone there, in fact, was to contact Robb’s parents and tell them how their son had died.
The optimistic and kindhearted young man had been more than her lover, he had been her best friend. Of all the recruits in the EDF—many of whom were painfully bigoted—Robb alone had taken Tasia at her word, given her a chance to be herself, and loved her for it. In the dark days of the war, she still missed him very much. He’d thought he was doing something important and meaningful by volunteering to bring a message deep into a gas giant’s clouds, but in the end it had proven a foolish waste of his life. Now a talented young man was gone, leaving a small void in the Earth Defense Forces and an aching hole in Tasia’s heart.
It didn’t help matters that her compy EA had also disappeared shortly after delivering a warning to the Roamers at Osquivel. Tasia had been unable to find any clues to where the Listener compy had gone. Not only was EA a valuable piece of “equipment,” she was also a friend who had been owned by clan Tamblyn for many years. Tasia still held out hope that the compy would eventually find her way back to EDF headquarters, even if she had to take a lengthy, roundabout route.
Though it no doubt added to her feelings of isolation, Tasia preferred to spend the week aboard her ship, watching entertainment loops or playing games. She had a medium build, was fit and strong but didn’t show it. She’d become adept at Ping-Pong, thanks to practicing with Robb—so adept, in fact, that most of her crew made excuses whenever she challenged them to a match. She couldn’t wait until all repairs, upgrades, and inspections were finished, so she could be on her way again, to go head-to-head with the inhuman enemy.
Unexpectedly, she received a summons to go to the Grid 7 flagship. She shuttled over to the Jupiter to meet with Admiral Sheila Willis, adjusting her clean uniform, making sure her shoulder-length light brown hair was bound in regulation fashion under her cap.
When Tasia presented herself in the admiral’s lounge, she was surprised to see the brawny, dark-haired EDF commander, General Kurt Lanyan, sitting in a visitor’s chair. She snapped to attention. “General Lanyan, sir. And Admiral Willis. You called me, sirs?”
She had met the swarthy General in a strategy session before the Osquivel offensive, when Robb had volunteered to attempt to communicate with the drogues.
“Commander Tamblyn, we have noted your exemplary service.” The General had a gruff voice. “Your solution of creating instant artificial rafts at Boone’s Crossing saved thousands of colonists. After reviewing your ship’s internal log, I have concluded that your performance during the Osquivel battle was exceptional. Furthermore, at Oncier you recently obtained vital information about the faeros and their struggle with the hydrogues.”
“Yes, sir.” Tasia didn’t know what else he wanted to hear. Her heart pounded. Was she somehow in line for another promotion? True, the battle of Osquivel had killed a great many officers, and the EDF would need to replace them. . . .
Admiral Willis folded her hands together. She was a thin, folksy woman who spoke in obscure platitudes, yet she had a wit as sharp as a monofilament wire. “Commander Tamblyn, would you be at all interested in having your ship carry a nasty little present to the drogues? King Peter has finally yanked off the leash and let us run loose.”
“What sort of nasty present, ma’am?”
The grandmotherly woman smiled. “How’d you like to drop a Klikiss Torch down their throats and blow the crap out of a whole hydrogue planet?”
Tasia responded instantly. “Admiral, General, I would welcome any opportunity for a little payback. We all have plenty of personal reasons for carrying a grudge.”
Lanyan chuckled. “I like your attitude, Commander Tamblyn.” He handed her documents and maps pinpointing the chosen target for the Klikiss Torch, an obscure gas giant named Ptoro.
Tasia couldn’t hide her surprised response. The Roamer clan Tylar had operated a large old skymine on Ptoro, but the facility was withdrawn after the hydrogue ultimatum. As far as she knew, no one had gone to chilly Ptoro in years. “Ptoro? Why would you want to—” She caught herself, and the General frowned at her.
“You’ve actually heard of it? It seems to be a fairly insignificant planet.”
“You’re right, sir. It’s just . . . in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”
“We’ve detected drogue activity there. That’s what counts.”
Admiral Willis added, “We’ll be sending a whole battle group along to keep you company, but your Manta will carry the big surprise.”
“As soon as we’re out of spacedock, my crew and I are completely at your disposal, sirs.”
Tasia practically danced her way back to the shuttle.
Roamers didn’t judge maturity by age, but by capabilities. The clans considered a person to be a functional adult once he or she could strip down, break apart, and reassemble virtually any piece of mechanical apparatus and could successfully navigate using stars and the old Ildiran databases. After being coached by her two brothers, Tasia had been particularly proud when she’d demonstrated that she could don a spacesuit and correctly match all the seals, ten times out of ten. She had been twelve the first time she’d done it.
Now she felt the same measure of pride as she stood in her Manta’s cargo bay. Swarms of engineers and technicians worked to install the racks, monitors, and peripheral equipment needed for deploying the Klikiss Torch. Oh, how she was going to enjoy seeing a bloated hydrogue planet turn into a bright new sun.
The green priest Rossia, Tasia’s communications link with the rest of the Spiral Arm, came up beside her, walking with a pronounced limp owing to an injury he had suffered on Theroc many years before. His eyes were bulging and oversized like stray Ping-Pong balls from the rec room.
“Turmoil . . . always turmoil,” he said. “The EDF seems to relish banging and pounding and reconfiguring things.”
Together they watched engineers load blunt-nosed torpedoes, part of the Klikiss Torch apparatus. The crew had already brought aboard a fast cargo ship that would be used to deliver the other end of the wormhole-generating machinery to a neutron star that would be transferred like a stellar bomb into Ptoro’s core.
“Gotta crack a few shells if you want to scramble the drogues,” she said. “After what they did to Theroc, you want to see them stopped, don’t you?”
The pop-eyed priest bobbed his head. “Oh, certainly the worldforest wishes the hydrogues to be defeated—or at least neutralized. But more than anything else, I want to go back home. The worldforest has been terribly injured, and like all green priests, I can hear it calling. I should be there helping to replant and rebuild.”
“But you volunteered to help the EDF, and you’re a vital link in our communications,” Tasia said. “We need you.”
He scratched his green cheek. “When everyone needs you, Commander, you’re forced to choose who has the greater need.”
“Well, it isn’t really your choice to make, once you’ve joined up with the military and given your word.” Many times, Tasia herself had wanted to return home to her clan’s water mines on Plumas, but she didn’t have that option—and neither did Rossia.
“I should tell you, Commander,” Rossia said, “that other green priests have been grumbling across telink, on other worlds, on other ships. They all feel the call of the worldforest. Not all of them can resist. We simply volunteered our services, remember. We did not formally join the Earth Defense Forces.”
She frowned at him as the work of installing the Klikiss Torch continued. “I would rather be someplace else, too, but we all have to keep up the fight. We each need to follow our Guiding Star, not be distracted by other flickers of light.”
Rossia gave his jerky nod. “A true green priest sets down roots of conviction, and is not blown about like a featherseed in the breeze.”
“Pick whatever metaphor you prefer. But you know the drogues are not going to stop attacking. In all probability they’ll go back to Theroc to finish the job they started.”
“All the more reason for the green priests to go home and help protect the worldforest.”
Tasia frowned at him. “On the contrary—all the more reason to stay with the EDF and hope we kick the stuffing out of them. How can you possibly protect the trees if you’re standing beside them on a planet that’s under attack? The full-blown military has a better chance than a handful of green priests do.”
Rossia touched the potted treeling he always kept with him, reticent and deep in thought. “Perhaps. I do not intend to leave, Commander Tamblyn. Many green priests have forgotten that the forest itself asked us to assist you in the struggle. We have all suffered losses in this war.” He shook his head slowly. “And we all make sacrifices.”